Sunday, May 17, 2009

Yesterday afternoon I finished reading the last story on my list of those submitted for consideration for the seventh crime fiction anthology by Level Best Books. Quarry, the title my co-editors and I have chosen, looks like it’s going to be our best collection ever. Kate Flora, Ruth McCarty and I are finishing up our notes, and will meet some time in June to discuss our choices. This is the fun part, but there is more.

All of us have met someone who wants to publish a journal or book, but few know exactly what that means. For the many writers who look high and low for a paying venue and wonder why they’re disappearing, here are some figures to ponder. I supplied these, or figures like them (costs change every year, unfortunately) a while back, but here is a fresh look at what it costs us, the three editors who constitute Level Best Books, to produce an anthology each year.

We pay nothing for layout and design (we already have that), and our costs are those we can’t avoid. Printing for 1,200 copies of a book 8.5 by 5.5 with perfect binding, 273 pp. and xii pp., and four-color cover is $4,704 (in 2008 dollars). In addition, we pay each author $25 per story; with 20 stories, that’s $500. We pay $100 for the cover photograph. The website costs about $210 a year, postage for mailing mss is $489 (photocopying 2 copies of approximately 70 stories is donated), and mailing proofs is about $30. We usually place ads in the Edgar program book and Crime Bake book, for $475. These out of pocket costs add up to $6,508.

That sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? If we just sell all the books at $15 per book, we’ll bring in $18,000, for a net of $11,492. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.

Each author is entitled to one free book, and we send out review copies. Okay, so now we have only 1,150 books to sell. The authors are also entitled to buy copies at half price, $7.50. We usually sell at least 300 copies to the writers, for $2,250. We now have 850 books left to sell.

Libraries get one third off, and sometimes buy up to 400 at this price, for $4,000. That sounds pretty good. We send out our flyers, set up panels, and take orders. We now have 400 books to sell. We turn to the bookstores.

Bookstores like to carry local titles, especially if one of the authors lives in the area. We scour our New England towns for independent bookstores and do our best to persuade them to take a few copies. Some are receptive, some are slow to warm up to the anthology, and some are downright hostile. But we get the books out there, thanks mostly to Kate and Ruth. Bookstores can buy books at 40% off, or $9, or at 50%, or $7.50, and no returns. If they want to be able to return the books, sometimes one of us has to go pick them up. The No returns policy is a good idea. So, let’s say we sell 300 books at $7.50 with no returns, for $2,250.

We now have 150 books left to sell to individuals, at $15 each, on which we will pay sales tax to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

If we set aside the books we plan to sell to individuals at full price, we will take in $8,500. We haven’t even purchased stamps for promotional mailings, paper for the many times the mss is printed and reviewed before being mailed out, and gas for driving around to bookstores to deliver books. We have not paid for design and layout, and we do not have an office or dedicated phone line. And we certainly have not paid any salaries to the editors. We have not calculated damaged books, stolen books, and lost books either mailed or left somewhere for pickup.

In addition, every story is read at least once by each editor; some are read twice during discussions over whether or not it really works well enough. Each story is then edited, and the page proofs are reviewed by all three editors as well as the authors. We deliver books to panels at libraries, to bookstores, to special events like conferences. We pay for our own gas, tolls, and aspirin. None of this is charged to Level Best Books, which is the only reason we have any money left.

Our profit so far would appear to be about $2,000, but there are three of us to share this. Despite all this, when I look up from this off-white keyboard and across at the bookshelves on the other side of the room, I feel a little burst of warmth and pride at the sight of the anthologies all lined up. It’s a wonderful feeling to hold the finished book in your hand, to have another reader ask you to sign a copy, to see the books neatly stacked on a table, ready for sale.

Back in the eighties, when I first began working in the Boston area, an editor said to me, “It takes a lot of people to make a good book.” He was right. We have a good printer, good writers, good artists for the cover, and three editors who bring different tastes and skills. It all seems to work, and the tiny profit we make seems to be all we need to keep going for one more year.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

This short piece begins what I have labeled Blog Bits—short letters to other writers and readers on what I find most interesting or confusing of entertaining about the creative life. I’ve called them bits because I’m pretty sure these random musings won’t turn out to be full-fledged essays. But they will be honest about my work, how I go about it, and how I view this publishing business.

As I launch my new website featuring the Mellingham books with Chief of Police Joe Silva and the short stories featuring Hindu-American sleuth Anita Ray I’m stuck with the unexpected topic of photography, not writing, for my opening letter. A couple of weeks ago I hung an exhibit of photographs in the art gallery at the Sawyer Free Library in Gloucester. The images are of Okanogan County in Washington State, a glorious land of high desert country, pine forests, and cold rippling streams that can turn into raging floods.

The photographs are meant to complement a series of poems by Jana Harris that tell the story of pioneer women in the late 19th century in the area before statehood. The poems sometimes brought me to tears in their descriptions of hardship and sudden death quietly accepted. Tomorrow night four women will read a selection of the poems and sing songs of the period, and enter into the experiences of women undaunted by any burden or challenge or disaster.

I took up photography in the late 1990s, just to enjoy for myself while traveling. But the images that I took seemed to have a strong narrative quality and, as a writer, I felt compelled to add to their understanding with a short text. Apparently one medium at a time isn’t enough for me. The first exhibit was entitled “Women at Work in South Asia,” and most of it appears on a separate page on this website. Take a look. Let me know what you think. And welcome to this new site.

Oh How Can I Keep On Singing by Jana Harris was first published in 1993 by the Ontario Review Press.

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About Me

Susan Oleksiw is the author of the Mellingham Mystery series featuring Chief of Police Joe Silva.
The first in the series, Murder in Mellingham, appeared in 1993. Double Take followed in 1994, and Family Album in 1995. Friends and Enemies was published in 2001, and A Murderous Innocence in 2006.
Anita Ray, an Indian American photographer living in India, appeared in Under the Eye of Kali (2010), after being introduced in a number of short stories. The Wrath of Shiva will appear in June 2012.